


Side Effects

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Sedation, Sickfic, Side Effects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2605436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a sort of a fluff fantasy made up of actual events that happened to other people, research into the effects of some sedatives, and a certain amount of poetic leeway--with a healthy dose of understanding that people really do have very individual, idiosyncratic reactions to certain meds. Holmeses seem more likely than most to be on the peculiar end of the side-effects bell curve. But this is loosely "correct" for a very sloppy standard of correctness. And it was fun fluff. I hope you enjoy it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Side Effects

_John—what do you know about Diprivan?_

_Greg? That really you? Why are you asking?_

_Um—classified. Diprivan?_

_Common sedative. Used in a range of circumstances. Operations. Pain control._

_Side effects?_

_Some. They all have some. Why?_

_I told you. Classified. Just—sexual response?_

_LOL! Yeah. Hallucinations, disinhibition._

_Last long?_

_Usually not. Greg…come on, mate, what’s going on?_

_Classified, classified, classified—and if the British Government knows I even asked, I’m dead._

_)(* &^%^&*( What!?!?!_

_Gotta go, John. Later._

_No, wait! What?!_

_Bye, John._

Greg turned the phone off—all the way off: airplane off. He pocketed the phone, then slipped back into the sitting room, where Mycroft Holmes, dressed in crisp, clean cotton pajamas, was sitting cross-legged and upright, humming softly to himself, looking down into his tented lap. Greg choked back laughter.

“Ok, sunshine. Apparently this is normal.”

“I told you so,” Mycroft said, relaxed and at ease, He grinned—a big, wide, face-splitting grin Greg could literally never have imagined before that very second. “Gets me every time.”

“You knew. Before you even went in for the surgery, you knew.”

“I told you I had an idiosyncratic response to sedation,” Mycroft said, prim and chipper, brows flying and eyes crinkling. “I told you it was all very embarrassing and I insisted on having work done here so I could recover at home, not in the dental clinic.” He sighed and streeeeetched—a lazy, cat-arch stretch that combined athletic ease with sensual bliss. “Not that it’s ever embarrassing at the time, mind you. I’m perfectly happy, now. It’s later I want to slit my throat and die of humiliation. The first time it happened did you know I slipped my hand up the nurse’s skirt…and I don’t even usually go for women. But there it is: she bent over and whooooops! There went my hand, right up into her knickers. My word, she squealed!”

Greg sat warily on the far end of the sofa, fascinated at this cheerful, chattering, relaxed man. Mycroft Holmes, who could make a stone statue look out of control, reminded him of no one so much as Martha Hudson when she was one glass of scotch and two joints into a “relaxed weekend.”

“So—why use the stuff if you know it does this to you?”

“Given the available side effects, I rather prefer this one,” Mycroft said, and looked down into his lap again. He considered, then cheerfully doinged his dong, watching the tent-pole wobble a bit as it sprang back into position. “Some of the others leave me depressed for weeks.” He looked back up at Lestrade, suddenly mournful—truly, profoundly mournful. “It’s miserable, you know. Bad enough dealing with disasters when I’m not trying to come up from that. When I’m down….” A single tear dripped from dark gingery lashes. He gulped, raised his chin, and said, “Being a complete sexual perv is still better than that. At least I’m a happy sexual perv.”

“So you are,” Lestrade said, fighting back some weird, tumbled blend of amusement and compassion. “Very happy, from the looks of it.”

Mycroft nodded, and leaned back into the sofa cushions, staring at his erection. “It just stands there, like a soldier in front of Buckingham Palace,” he said, contemplatively.

“Not dying to do anything with it?”

“Oh, longing, actually. But I do have a little sense of decorum. Not much, mind you.” He glinted a smile at Lestrade, and went on, “That’s why I asked you to come play nurse for me. At least if I hit on you I won’t regret the choice of victim. I felt bad for that poor nurse for weeks, poor thing. It wasn’t like there was anything I much wanted to do with her, really.”

Lestrade snorted and choked. “Unlike me?” He wasn’t sure what he thought of that. “Or do you just trust me to be discreet?”

“Either?” Mycroft tipped his head. “Both?”

“Sounds like taking advantage—but I’m not sure if it would be you taking advantage of me, or me taking advantage of your drugged state. Talk about a roofie from hell…”

“Oh, better than a roofie,” Mycroft reassured him. “I know more or less what I’m doing, and I’ll remember it later. Just have all the inhibition of Sherlock at age three. I remember him telling Aunt Helene all about how fun it was to have a ‘dingle’ to play with. He offered to let her try his.” His face lit up, eyes shining, and he looked at Lestrade, mouth opening—

In a panic, Lestrade vaulted down the sofa and covered the man’s mouth with his palm. “No. Don’t—don’t say it. You’ll be worse than depressed later, if you say it.”

Mycroft wriggled and was free, leaning back and quickly saying, “Only if you say no.”

“Ethics. I’ve got ethics. You’re flying, Mycroft—higher than Sherlock on a bender.”

“But much nicer.”

There was that… Sherlock on a bender was a raging sonofabitch. Apparently the thought showed, as Mycroft giggled, and said, “I told you so. Sherlock—cocaine and heroine, both. If I were going to get addicted, it would be to this stuff. Lovely, lovely Diprivan!” Then, with a boneless floomph, he collapsed onto Lestrade and seemed to seep close, propelled by some arcane gravity known only to cats and spilled tea. He…cuddled, tucking his head under Lestrade’s chin. “Be nice to me,” he said, voice pouty in a mild, blurry sort of way. “No one ever pets me, you know.”

Of course they don’t, you berk, Lestrade thought, panicked. How did he end up with his arms—and his lap—more or less full of Mycroft Holmes? A Mycroft Holmes giddy and gushy and goopy and distressingly clingy?

“Are you like this when you’re drunk?” he asked, squirming and hitching around until he at least had the taller man draped across him in ways that didn’t involve sharp elbows or a crick in his neck.

“Mmmm. A little. Sherry does it to me,” Mycroft murmured, and then, to Lestrade’s dismay, he rubbed his face tenderly over Lestrade’s chest, hugging him firm. “Not so much, though.”

“How long does it last?”

“They’ve got me on pills for a day, before I switch over to paracetamol.”

Lestrade shuddered. “A day?”

“Mmmmmm.” Mycroft sighed happily. “That’s why I can’t stay in hospital. Think of all the poor nurses. And my reputation. Rub my shoulders? They’re cold and sad.”

“I don’t think shoulders can be sad, Mycroft.” But Lestrade was grinning. He lifted a hand and began a slow, circular caress, around and around between Mycroft’s shoulder blades. He felt the man arc up under his touch, like a contented cat.

“Mine can be,” Mycroft said. “My shoulders are sad all the time. That’s why I wear waistcoats—the warmth makes them a bit happier. On bad days I wish I had a heating pad to wear right between my shoulders, where all the bad things sit. Yes—right there. It’s horrible: like the demon in The Clockwork Nightingale. The sad and the cold just sit there between my shoulders and by the end of a bad mission it’s like a glacier made of tears.”

“That’s poetic.”

“I am when I’m on Diprivan.” He rumbled, then pulled himself more completely into Lestrade’s lap. “Horny, too. But you worked that bit out, I suspect.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen smaller towers in downtown London.”

“Of course you have. There are some very small dicks in Parliament, I assure you—and you don’t want to know about the Cabinet ministers. They give whole new meaning to the phrase ‘taking a wee.’”

Lestrade sputtered. “Hell, Mycroft…Ok. Why me?”

“Besides that if I’m going to proposition someone indecently you’re the BILF?”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Tomorrow I’ll swear I don’t. Today?” He sighed happily. “God, I love this.”

“Really, Mycroft—why me?”

“Because you’re beautiful, and kind, and I can trust you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” The man was so happy, even if he was horny as a herd of billy goats. “You’ll forgive me.”

“Huh?”

“For wanting this…”He sighed, and then, in a velvet whisper, said, “For wanting you.” Then in a dozey haze, he said, “Don’t worry. Tomorrow I’ll be back to normal and I’ll be ashamed enough for both of us. I’ll be easy to forgive. Guilty and embarrassed and feeling a complete idiot.”

Lestrade stroked the little space between Mycroft’s shoulders that got cold and sad—a space he suddenly knew would be a “glacier made of tears” the next day. “No forgiveness needed, you silly berk.”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Mycroft murmured. “Putting my hand up a nurse’s knickers, or curling up in your lap and making an idiot of myself. But at least you’re my friend.”

“I am?”

Mycroft’s face was buried in his chest. His arms were looped around his ribs. “Ask me tomorrow. Right now I need two pills and to go to sleep.” Only he wasn’t letting Lestrade go to fetch the pill bottle, or get the water, nor was he asking to be helped to bed.

Lestrade pressed his face against the top of Mycroft’s head. “How do you manage to hide all this silly-old-bear inside a bespoke suit?”

“Talent. Raw talent. It’s a Holmes thing….” Mycroft’s voice was fading.

“Ok, you have to let me up,” Lestrade said. “I’ll get your pills and then tuck you into bed. Tomorrow’s a new day.”

“Mmmmm.”

But in the end they stayed on the sofa. In the morning Mycroft woke up—sore from surgery, and from the lack of pain killers, and from a night spent bent into a pretzel to fit into Lestrade’s lap.

But there was a warm hand where the arctic cold demon of sorrow and regret usually sat, and when he cringed remembering what he’d said and done, Lestrade just said, “Silly old bear. Come on. Let’s get you some pills.” Then he asked, once more, “Why me?”

And because of the hand and the kindness, and because he owed it as a debt of honor, Mycroft made himself tell the truth.

“Because you’re my friend—my one friend. And I love you.”

Which was enough  answer for both of them.


End file.
